Sunday 25 January 2015

Official Forums

The official Galaxial forums are now online!

http://forums.galaxial.com

I am considering moving these development logs over to the forum to keep everything more centralized and make it easier for discussion.

Tuesday 20 January 2015

Galaxy Creator and Ships

Galaxy Creator

The interface window for creating a galaxy and setting up a new game is almost finished.

Click to enlarge the images.



The Jumpgate Dead Ends setting affects how many links there are between planets. High creates more isolated clusters and longer routes. Setting this to None will link the galaxy as a Gabriel Graph.



Center view of the galaxy created above. Planet types are fully moddable, so you can change their occurrence probability or add additional types.

Ships

Some of the new ship designs that were made recently.


The ship hull names all come from Mesopotamian mythology (Babylonian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Hittite)


Each weapon type (Beam Laser, Artillery Cannon, Missile Launcher...) has different turret graphics. I haven't got around to making them all yet.


Dreadnaughts are currently the largest ship type in the game. Carriers are on hold for now, as I'm not sure how exactly the fighter/drone mechanics are going to work. Rather than rush them for release, think I should leave them for a later update.

Loading Screen

I completely remade the loading screen that is shown before entering the main menu. It's now multi-threaded, much more responsive and has some background animation while the game loads. The triangle colors and image changes randomly each time you run the game.


Had to update my old texture code for asynchronously loading, which is now double the speed!

Takes about 4 seconds to get to the main menu at the moment, but I expect that will increase as more content gets added.

Tuesday 25 November 2014

Mining


Lots of changes to mining and asteroids.

There is now just one "metal" resource that is mined from asteroids rather than the previous Common, Reactive, Radioactive and Rare metals that have been in the game until now. This is to reduce the orders micromanagement for mining ships. Now there is no need to constantly keep track of what they are mining and balance the amounts of each resource you need.

To keep some complexity there are now a lot more asteroid minerals, each having a different maximum yield and mining multiplier (accessibility). Yield is the maximum amount you can mine from the asteroid and the mining multiplier affects mining laser module speed.

Rare asteroid minerals will be faster to mine and take longer until they become depleted, but every mineral type still provides the same "metal" resource used for building stuff.

During galaxy generation there will be an option to re-spawn asteroids some time after they have been mined completely. When an asteroid re-spawns it will return as the next smaller size (Large becomes a Medium etc.)

Larger asteroids have much higher yield and mining multipliers. This is to discourage mining in the same asteroid belt forever if you are going to use the re-spawn option. It will still be better to look for larger asteroids.

Asteroid stats example:

Large: Yield = 2400, Multiplier = 140%
Medium: Yield = 1200, Multiplier = 120%
Small: Yield = 600, Multiplier = 100%
Depleted: Yield = 300, Multiplier = 80%

Asteroid Minerals

Listed below are the asteroid minerals currently in the game. I decided to use real mineral names found on Earth rather than made up ones. Not sure if this would be realistic as I expect there are some minerals below that wouldn't be found on asteroids. (let me know of any)

The element composition of each mineral shown on the tool-tips have no effect on gameplay, just something interesting I wanted to add.

Common Minerals: Sphalerite, Chalcopyrite, Pyromorphite, Cuprite, Stibnite, Kamacite, Acuminite and Pyrolusite.

Uncommon Minerals: Chromite, Boehmite, Wolframite, Cobaltite, Faustite, Rutile and Barite

 Semi-Rare Minerals: Ruthenium, Molybdenite, Polarite, Thorite, Rhodium, Iridium and Gold


 Rare Minerals: Rhenium, Bromellite, Palladium, Osmium, Gadolinite, Monazite, Churchite and Sylvanite.

Planet Tooltips

Asteroid details will be shown on discovered planet tooltips.

Bonus Screenshot

(One of the new mining ships)

Saturday 23 August 2014

Research

The research system in Galaxial has undergone many redesigns over the summer and has turned out quite different to what I originally had planned. The user interface still needs some work but is now mostly finished.


Once you have enough research data it can be spent on projects to instantly 'unlock' them. Rather than choosing what to research and then having to wait for it to be completed. The reason I choose to do it this way is because the research data already takes a long time to accumulate and will also be required for building really advanced ships and modules.

The technologies shown in brown are unique to the faction you are playing and will generally provide strong bonuses. The same basic technologies, ships and modules will be available to all factions but there will be a lot of faction unique stuff that is more specialized and will allow different play styles and strategies.

I am still undecided on how many levels to have for each research project. I would like for there to be no limit (unlimited research) possibly with diminishing returns the more you research a technology, but this could potentially lead to a lot of balancing issues.

Maybe its not a problem? For example if the player becomes too powerful then all other empires could become afraid and form a coalition against you.

Resources

A resources bar has been added along the top of the screen to show your empires total resource stockpile.


The resources are (from left to right): Credits, Research Data, Crew, Troops, Common Metals, Rare Metals and Precious Metals.

Crew and Troops are a recent addition and I will explain how they work in a future development log as they are not quite finished yet.

Ore mined from asteroids require transporting to colonies that have refinery facilities and after being processed into metals they are then added to the resource stockpile.

Colony Graphics

Graphics for the colony populations have been improved slightly again to match the same style used for the ships. Facilities such as shipyards, refineries, hydroponics will be constructed at the empty inner circles. New graphics for those haven't been created yet.


Minimap

Added a button to lock the minimap viewing position so you can keep an eye on two locations at once. You wont have to rely on just this as there will eventually be some kind of message/alert system for when important events happen.


Most of the user interface windows/widgets in the game look much cleaner now after removing a lot of the inner white outlines and added some subtle gradients.


Galaxial is proving to be an enormous game to develop solo!
Thanks again for your patience and I hope you will really enjoy it when you finally get to play.

Monday 24 February 2014

Sound Effects and Projectiles Video


Stress Test Video

For the video I created a galaxy with 75 planets and placed 60 ships in each of them (4500 ships in total)

Each of the smaller ships have the most CPU intensive weapons (rapid fire auto-cannons) to fire at the indestructible capital ship all at once. This was to test that the game will handle the large number of objects and sound effects.

There are no simplified calculations in the game for battles that you are not currently viewing (apart from rendering optimizations). All AI, ships, collision detection, projectiles and missiles are always fully simulated.

I expect the ship count could be significantly higher for normal game-play as there wont be battles happening all at exactly the same time like in this video. In a typical game you will most likely have the majority of ships transporting cargo, mining or patrolling. Those kind of tasks don't require much processing power at all.

The frame-rate displayed in the video would normally have been much higher but the recording software was limiting it quite badly. Running the same test scenario without recording I averaged around 50 FPS.

System specs used:

AMD Phenom X4 9950 (2600 MHz, 4 core)
Nvidia Geforce GTX 260
4 GB RAM

Audio Library

I recently switched the audio library that Galaxial uses over to irrKlang as I was having problems with OpenAL drivers and sound crackling. Overall I'm really pleased with irrKlang's performance and ease of use.

In the video there are often over 300 sound effects playing at once! Each individual projectile from the auto-cannon weapons have their own firing and impact sound effect. Ships also have engine rumbling sounds which sound great when there's not much going on.

A lot of the sound effects I'm using at the moment are just placeholders, but I am planning to get professional effects made by a sound designer when the game is almost feature complete.

Cargo Transfer

The drag and drop user interface for manually transferring cargo between docked ships and colonies has been finished. Holding shift while dragging items will let you set the amount to transfer.


The Load/Unload buttons at the bottom will attempt move all items from one cargo hold to the other, so long as there is available space in the ship. Colonies will have unlimited storage space.

Bonus Screenshot

(New Jumpgate graphics)


Tuesday 10 December 2013

Fleet Leaders

Quick post about the fleet leaders and experience system I have planned which I am currently working on.

 

Command Hierarchy

Each ship can be assigned to a Squadron which can have a maximum of 9 ships in them. They will follow the same orders, work as a group and keep in formation (if you want them to).

Wings are the next level up and can command a maximum of 4 Squadrons (possibly more when researched).
All of the Squadrons assigned to the Wing will follow the same orders, so you can assign orders to a large number of ships all at once.

Fleet is the highest level. It can hold any number of Wings or Squadrons. You probably wont be able to give specific orders at the Fleet level and I haven't decided yet if more than one Fleet will be allowed.

 

Leaders

Each Squadron, Wing and Fleet can be assigned a leader character. This leader will earn experience from battles they are involved in. If any of the ships the leader commands was involved in destroying an enemy ship then they will gain experience towards their skill level.

The leaders skill level will give specific bonuses depending on where they are placed in the Command Hierarchy:

Squadron Commander: 5% bonus to damage per skill level
Wing Commander: 5% bonus to maximum speed per skill level
Fleet Commander: -5% ship upkeep cost per skill level

The only way for leaders to gain experience will be in command of a Squadron. To do this they will need to be in the lead ship. If the ship gets destroyed the leader dies.

You will be free to reassign leaders whenever you like, but only if there are no enemies nearby.

 

Traits

Traits provide bonuses to all ships the leader is in command of. When a new leader is recruited they may have a number of traits, but they cannot be gained in other ways. A few examples:

Mining Specialist - Gives a 20% bonus to mining yield
Shield Specialist - Gives a 10% bonus to shield hit points and recharge
Energy Weapon Specialist - Gives a 10% bonus to energy weapon damage
Engine Specialist - Gives a 10% bonus to ship maximum speed
Transport Specialist - Gives a 10% bonus to cargo capacity

Trait effects will cascade down the command hierarchy and are halved at each level. If you have leaders each with the Mining Specialist trait at the Fleet, Wing and Squadron levels then it will give the bonus of 35% (5 + 10 + 20) to the ships below.

 

Proficiencies

As leaders gain experience they also get better at commanding certain types of ship. For example if the leader only has Cruisers in their Squadron, experience will also be added to their Cruiser Leader skill which provides bonuses only for Cruisers.

If there are more than one class of ship in the Squadron, experience will be distributed evenly to the relevant proficiencies.

 

Medals

Leaders will also be able to earn medals when they achieve certain goals (total ships destroyed, ore mined, cargo transported etc..) Some medal examples:

Long Service Medal (Awarded for time spent as an active leader)  - Gives a 10% reduction to ship upkeep costs
Bronze War Medal (Awarded for total ships destroyed) - Gives a 5% bonus to shield and armor hit points

 

Potential Problems

The whole leader system is designed to be completely passive. You wont need to manually spend skill points. They can just be left alone and they will automatically gain new skills, proficiencies and medals as they do stuff. So it shouldn't require much micro-management at all. Of course you still might want to check on them occasionally to ensure you are making the best of their abilities in their current position.

As the player can take manual control of any of their own ships in the game, there is the problem of what happens when taking control of a Squadron leaders ship. Should that leader continue to get experience for ships you destroy?

I don't really want to add a special type of leader character that represents the player as I would like the player to be able to take control of another ship once it gets destroyed.


Much of this is not fully implemented yet, so would very much like to hear your feedback and suggestions!

Friday 6 December 2013

Galaxy Map

The past month I have mainly been working on the galaxy map screen to make it more informative but still trying to keep it very minimal.

(150 planets, 1 player, 3 AI)

The sector icons are now colored to show the different planet types. Surrounding each planet there are small circular icons to show if there are any ships in that sector. (green = player, red = enemy, blue = allied, white = neutral) 

It hasn't been implemented yet, but you will be able to hover the mouse over the ship icons to display the number and class of ships at the planet. Hovering over the planet icons will also show more information about them.

(25 planets, 1 player, 3 AI)

The jump-gate links and borders are colored based on the owning factions relations to you.

There may be more than one enemy/ally that will show the same colored border and jump-gate links. So to distinguish each faction, the smaller circle at the center of each planet icon will be used to show its unique "faction color".

However this is not shown in the screenshots as the faction and relation colors are currently identical for testing.

Empire Sphere of Influence

(Very rough sphere of influence style empire maps)

I have also experimented with rendering some "sphere of influence" style empire borders, but ran into performance issues with the really large maps. I think it maybe covers up too much of the screen, hiding all the stars in the background which look nice as you move around the map. (the stars use 3D positions)

I have abandoned this approach for now, in favor of the smaller overlapping borders you can see in the first two screenshots.

Planet Colors


Colors used for each of the different planet types have been tweaked slightly. Volcanic was difficult as the planet graphics are limited to just one color and no detail. (lava or rock?) 

Each of the types (Temperate, Desert etc.) have a few variations so they won't all seem identical.

Miscellaneous

  • Galaxy generation code completely rewritten (now cleaner and more efficient)
  • Probability distribution working properly for planet types, bonuses and trade goods
  • Detailed galaxy log created during generation with lots of statistics (using for balancing)
  • Started on the high level AI for factions (aware of all the objects and territory they control)
  • Initial design work done for the different government types 

 

Bonus Screenshot

(The leftovers from a large cruiser battle)